


Mission Break

by Prentice



Series: Mission Log [2]
Category: Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Experimental Style, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hydra (Marvel), Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Second Person, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Things will get worse before they get better
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-18 22:57:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11300577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prentice/pseuds/Prentice
Summary: You wake in a chair.There is screaming.Lots and lots of screaming.It doesn’t stop.It never stops.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _*Please note that this will only make sense if you've read the previous story in the series, Mission Abort.*_
> 
>  
> 
> For those who have read the previous part, this entire fic will be about laying the groundwork for the next part in the series, which will actually (finally) (maybe) have a different point of view. Yes, you'll actually get to see what's going on with everyone else...eventually. :P
> 
> The first second of this chapter is *absolutely* supposed to echo the ending of Mission Abort with some subtle but purposeful changes. Kudos to anyone who figures out why.

 

You wake in a chair.

There is screaming.

Lots and lots of screaming.

It doesn’t stop.

It never stops.

*

_“Longing._ _Rusted. Sixteen. Engine. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Homecoming. Seven. Build.”_

*

You wake in a chair.

Your hands, they’re _shaking_.

The screaming doesn’t stop.

*

_“…sted._ _Sixteen. Engine. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Homecoming. Seven. Build.”_

_*_

You wake in a chair.

Your body, it’s _burning_.

The screaming doesn’t stop.

*

_“ – teen. Engine. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Homecoming. Seven. Build.”_

*

You wake in a chair.

Your head, it’s _aching_.  

The screaming doesn’t stop.

*

_“…break. Furnace. Nine. Homecoming. Seven. Build.”_

*

You wake in a chair.

Your heart is racing. Your skin is clammy. Your mouth tastes of – blood and rust and hot metal – and your head feels – it feels –

The screaming doesn’t stop.

*

_“…coming. Seven. Build.”_

*

You wake in a chair.

You hear a voice. It says – it says –

*

_“…Build.”_

*

The screaming –

It stops.

*

A man in a uniform walks around you. Inspects you. Tells you slowly, purposefully: _“Longing._ _Rusted. Sixteen. Engine. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Homecoming. Seven. Build.”_

You look up at him as he closes a book. It’s slightly battered, the edges of the pages are worn, and the cover is smudged and cracked and there is a large fading black star on the front. He looks at you, says: “Good morning, Mechanic.”

You blink, open your mouth, and say in perfect gravelly submission: “Ready to comply.”

The man in uniform nods, a perfunctory move that he seems to have done a hundred times before. He says, “We have something we wish for you to build.”

He holds out a folder with a small stack of papers inside. Blueprints, you think. Various blueprints, some half-finished.

You take them. You stand. You wait.

The man in uniform’s nods again.

He says, “get to work.”

So you do.

*

The room they put you in is not large and is not small.

It is simple and efficient, with gray concrete walls and floors. There is a bed in one corner and a chair and drafting table in the other. All three are bolted to the floor, but you think of things like stress and strain and pressure points and something inside you coils up tight, like a venomous snake waiting for its prey to come close enough, and you –

Blink.

Once, then twice, because on the wall beside the bed, there is a row of jaggedly scratched in marks. You don’t bother to count them, though you think there might be at least seven or eight dozen of them. You wonder how they got there.

Wonder who put them there. Wonder –

You blink again. Hand lifting away from the wall where you’ve made another mark. Jagged and sharp, it sits in line with all the others; small and unobtrusive and unnoticeable unless you’re looking for them.

*

The work they give you is simple and then again not.

It is half-finished blueprints and decades old schematics and you hunch over them with a single-minded focus that feels – old – and then again new. Like you’ve been doing this forever and yet only started yesterday. Your thoughts and ideas sometimes stumbling and tripping over one another like overeager children all wanting your attention.

It is – satisfying. Doing this work. Satisfying and then again…

Terrifying.

Why, you’re not sure. You just know that it is both, all at the same time, and sometimes hesitate in your work. Draw it out even though you know it would only take a matter of moments to finish because somehow, all of this – it is satisfying, but also – wrong.

It is wrong.

You’re just not sure why.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those wondering, anything that seems repetitious to previous sections is actually meant to be that way. The next chapter will likely be posted sometime next week (just an FYI so no one expects as quick an update as this one).
> 
> Apologies for any typos or grammar issues!

There is a man with a heavy accent standing across the room. He doesn’t speak to you, but you’ve heard him speak. Heard him say things.

 _“Herr Rusk does not like to be kept waiting,”_ you’ve heard him say to the man in uniform. He sounds angry and perhaps a little frightened. Disgusted, even, nauseous.

He doesn’t like the sight of blood, you think. Doesn’t like the harsh sound of flesh meeting flesh. Doesn’t like the smell of sweat and blood and bile hitting the mat as you are dropped to the floor by a fist into your stomach.

It is the second time you have done this. The second time that you have fallen. There will not be a third time, you think, as you push yourself shakily to your bare feet, blood trickling out your nose and down your chin.

He is – a paper pusher.  Yes, a paper pusher. That is the correct term.

Even though he wears a uniform – _black_ – and boots – _polished_ – and has a shiny stylized row of medals pinned carefully – _pompously_ – above his uniform’s breast pocket, he is nothing more than a mouthpiece. 

A messenger.

An eager little lapdog, you think disgustedly, rage you’re not quite sure what to do with welling up inside you as you slam your fist again and again against the side of your opponent’s face. Your knuckles split beneath the impact, blood welling slick and wet against your skin as you twist and turn and slam your opponent into the ground. He goes down hard, head smacking against the pavement, and you’re on him in seconds, bruised and bloodied fingers biting mercilessly into his skin as you push your knees into his chest.

You could easily snap his neck like this. You could suffocate him like this. You could even dig your fingers into the tender flesh beneath his eye sockets and make him beg for mercy. You could –

“Enough,” a voice barks at you from across the room, tone sharp and familiar and you comply with it immediately, heart beating like a hummingbird’s wings inside your chest as you force your hands away from your opponent’s throat and his carotid artery. “Let him up.”

You do, slowly.

Fingers uncurling from around the man’s neck one by one, split knuckles stinging as you gain your feet.

It isn’t easy.

Your ribs are aching sharply now that you’re no longer fighting, bones grinding together unnaturally as you force yourself to stand at attention. Blood and sweat prickle on your skin, sliding down your flesh in little rivers that dampen and dirty your already soiled work clothes. Everything about you is painful and sore; bruised in ways that are becoming familiar.

Far too familiar, you think. It is not your place to say this, of course. You would be beaten for it. Worse than beaten for it. You would be –

“Mechanic,” a new voice says to you, and it crawls across your skin, the rage inside you rumbling in your chest like an animal. Like a feral thing made of flesh and bone and blood and metal. Like – like – something made of – of – iron, you think.

 _Iron_.

Why is that so –

“We have work for you.”

*

The build goes – badly.

There is no other way to say it. It goes badly and continues to go badly. The blueprints they’ve given you are decades old and incomplete with sloppy calculations that are not just wrong but dangerous, so much so that you’re forced to abandon them entirely and begin anew.

It isn’t easy.

The schematics are clumsy at best and amateurish at worst. The main framework so unclear that you can’t help but wonder what exactly the original inventor had been trying to achieve. A weapon of some kind, clearly, but with plans as old as these surely it couldn’t have been –

“Mechanic,” a voice growls from the doorway, the heavy squeak and scrape of polished boots against concrete enough to make you stiffen, hair rising on the back of your neck as you straighten and turn because you know what comes next.

You _know_.

Even though you shouldn’t.

Even though you couldn’t.

Even though…

*

You wake in a chair.

There is screaming.

Lots and lots of screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented with their thoughts about pairings! I'm still sitting on the fence so please feel free to share anymore thoughts you might have.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest, I've been wavering on the pairings. I'm not saying they're out (at the very least, this will be WinterIron) but the more I write, the more I realize that it'll be a really long road ahead of me (beyond the already long road I've set for myself) so I'd love to hear thoughts on that? Pairings as they are, yes/no?


End file.
